Clio came awake all at once, aching in every limb. She would have given anything to return to consciousness slowly, to drift back to reality like rousing from a deep sleep where memories and awareness gathered one by one, but her brain snapped back to the present without any reprieve.

Grief, as tangible as a blade lodged in her heart, was waiting for her upon waking. An impossible heaviness dragged at her chest, crushing her lungs. She couldn’t breathe properly. All she could do was cry—horrible, body-wrenching sobs.

Kassia was dead. She was dead.

That inescapable, soul-tearing truth blazed inside her. Her best friend. The one person in the world who’d cared about Clio with no strings attached. With only a half-brother who wouldn’t let her come home, Kassia had been her family for the last two years.

And she was dead. Murdered by her cousin. Betrayed and killed without a chance to defend herself. Why had Clio let Kassia step in front of her? Why hadn’t she pushed ahead, gone through the door first?

Through her sorrow, Clio took in her surroundings. A cold stone floor. A matching stone wall behind her. Dull steel bars formed the other three walls of the small cube. Five identical cells were lined up next to hers, filled with shadows barely touched by the dim light leaking from a narrow window above the only door into the room.

A prison. A dungeon.

But she didn’t care. Fear failed to penetrate her anguish, and she huddled against the wall and cried until exhaustion scraped across her nerves and no more tears fell. Too weary to move, she stared dully at the row of empty cells. So this was it. This was where she would die. Somehow, it was comforting to know she would be gone soon and this pain would end. She wouldn’t have to keep going without Kassia.

Slowly, the sharpest edge of grief lessened enough that she could feel the first whisper of fear. Again, she looked at the other cells. Empty. Where was Lyre?

Her last sight of him flashed through her mind: held on his knees by his brother, blood running down his face, his black eyes dull with despair. Bereft of magic, completely helpless.

She touched the back of her head where pain had stabbed so deeply. Lyre had hit her with a spell—knocking her unconscious. To protect her. To stop Madrigal from using aphrodesia to force her to answer their questions. How much had that act of mercy cost Lyre?

Her hand slid down, and her fingers brushed the cold steel band around her neck. A collar. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the growing terror. It was a magic-dampening collar, one of Chrysalis’s principal inventions that blocked daemons from accessing their magic. She couldn’t cast spells or activate weaves. She couldn’t even use her asper.

Beneath her shirt, Lyre’s chain of spells and the clock key rested against her skin. They hadn’t taken it from her? Maybe no one had checked to see if she was armed. They wouldn’t have expected her to be carrying Lyre’s weavings, and with the magic-dampening collar, it didn’t matter what lodestones she had.

Pressing her back to the wall, she drew her knees up to her chest and let the despair roll through her in dark, icy waves. Was Lyre dead? Or was his family interrogating him for information on his clock spell—the existence of which she’d revealed to Madrigal? Were they hurting him?

What would they do to Clio? Kill her? Torture her? Would they blame her for Eryx stealing a one-of-a-kind weaving with devastating power?

She bit down on her lower lip until she tasted blood. Eryx had stolen the clock spell. The KLOC, as Lyre called it. Did Eryx understand what it could do? How dangerous it was? If he brought it to Bastian, would they use it and accidentally wipe out all the magic in Irida’s capital?

No, they couldn’t use it. Not without the key. Eryx didn’t know about the key, or he would have stolen that too.

Given enough time, Bastian would deduce that he needed to wind the clock. He was smarter and better educated than Clio. If he figured out how to use the spell, he would unleash it and do untold amounts of damage before he realized what he held.

The door clattered and she shot to her feet—or she tried to. Her stiff legs buckled and she ended up in a heap in the far corner of her cell. Terrified, she curled into the smallest ball possible.

Two daemons clad in black uniforms walked through the door. Two more followed, moving sideways with a third man between them—a prisoner with his arms chained in front of him. A final pair of guards followed the others into the space adjacent to the six cells.

Light cut across their faces, illuminating the new prisoner—the dried blood streaking his face, the angry red bruise darkening his cheek, the stormy gray eyes.

Clio gasped in recognition and huddled even farther into her corner.

The guards led Ash to the cell beside hers and pulled the door open. One roughly shoved the draconian forward. He stumbled a step as though losing his balance—then slammed his shoulder into the nearest guard. The daemon hit the bars with a clang.

Swearing furiously, two more guards grabbed Ash and pulled him away from the one he’d body-checked. Ash snapped his head back, his skull crunching against a daemon’s face. Wrists still chained, he wrenched free, spun, and slammed a roundhouse kick into the belly of a third man. He flew backward and bowled over two others, leaving only one guard standing.

Then, with an icy, taunting smirk, Ash strolled into his cell and sat back against the far wall.

“Bastard,” the uninjured guard muttered.

Hauling his comrade out of the way, the daemon slammed the cell shut and locked it with a flash of magic. Gathering themselves and muttering profanities, the six guards left the room with more haste than dignity. The door shut again and the lock clanked loudly, the sound echoing with finality.

Clio pressed into her corner. Ash was wearing the same clothes she’d last seen him in, and the only change in his appearance was the blood and bruises on his face. It looked like someone had hit him. Maybe multiple someones.

He adjusted his chained wrists, then turned to study her.

She shrank like a mouse caught under a cat’s paw. They stared at each other in silence, his dark eyes unreadable, his expression empty of emotion—no pain, no fear, no despair. She wondered what he saw on her face. Finally, he looked away, gazing at the blank wall instead.

“You did something stupid.” His deep voice shivered through her.

“What?” she whispered hoarsely.

“You did something stupid,” he repeated, “to end up in here.”

She sucked in a trembling breath. “Something stupid … like murdering a warlord’s bodyguards at Samael’s fancy party?”

A corner of his mouth lifted in a faint smile. Not even a flicker of remorse touched his features.

She relaxed her tight, defensive ball and stretched her legs out. “Where is here, exactly? Is this a dungeon?”

“It’s part of the bastille. A holding room where new inmates wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For their sentence to be determined.”

She swallowed back her terror. “How do you know that? Have you been here before?”

A shadow of emotion crossed his face, something dark and hard and seething with hatred. “Many times.”

She rested her chin on her knees and whispered, “I’ve never been in a prison before.”

He said nothing, closing his eyes. His calm somehow worsened her fear, as though her heart needed to beat twice as fast to make up for his lack of panic.

“How long will we have to wait?”

“Don’t know.”

“What sort of—of sentence … will they …”

“It depends on how stupid you were.”

She bit down on her sore lower lip to contain her protest. The Rysalis brothers might have captured her because of Eryx, but no matter how she looked at it, breaking into Chrysalis had been stupid. She should have escaped instead of saving Lyre. Then Kassia would be alive. And Lyre … Lyre would probably die anyway. It had all been for nothing.

“Why did you attack those guards?” she whispered.

“Which ones?”

“At the palace … and the ones just now, I guess.”

He twitched his shoulder in a shrug. “Why not?”

“W-what?” She stared at him. “Don’t you care that they’ll punish you?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you afraid of pain?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you afraid to die?”

“No.”

Her head spun. “Does anything frighten you?”

His eyes opened, his head turning toward her again. “Are you going to ask irritating questions the entire time we’re in here?”

She met his stormy gaze and knew something had the power to frighten him. But he wasn’t about to tell her what.

“How else will we pass the time?” she asked, managing to sound just a little arch.

He thumped his head back into the wall, even though the impact must have hurt. “I’m not answering any more questions.”

“Where’s your little dragon?”

He said nothing, holding to his declaration.

“Why have you been here so many times before?” She waited a beat. “What kind of mercenary are you? Why do you work for Hades if they lock you up in here? Don’t draconians hate reapers? Who’s that Raum guy you were with at the—”

He growled, the low, vicious sound sending a violent quiver through her.

“Okay, answer one more question, and I won’t ask anything else.”

His glower turned on her and she involuntarily shrank back before catching herself. He couldn’t reach her. Heavy steel bars separated them, and a magic-dampening collar even thicker than hers glinted around his neck.

“Just one,” she cajoled.

“No.”

“I just want to know … you had those guards beat, so why did you walk into your cell on your own? You could have escaped.”

“Escaped to where?”

She frowned. “Huh?”

He said nothing more, and she gave up. Silence fell over the room, broken only by the slow drip of water from somewhere. Without conversation to distract her, the terror and despair crept in again, chilling her until she was shaking. Wrapping her arms around herself and squeezing hard, she again looked at Ash.

“One more questi—”

“No.”

Her gaze fell and she lowered her face, resting her forehead on her knees. “Are they going to kill me?” she whispered to her lap.

A moment of silence, then an aggravated sigh. “I told you, it depends on what you did.”

“I broke into Chrysalis and stole a secret spell from Lyre’s workroom.”

Another minute passed, and she could feel his focus on her, but she didn’t raise her head.

“Tell me everything,” he murmured.

She wasn’t sure why, but she did. The words tumbled out, a halting rendition of events from Dulcet kidnapping her up to Eryx fleeing with the spell, leaving her and Lyre to be captured by the Rysalis family. She didn’t mention how Lyre’s spell worked or the details he’d shared about its potential destructive power. Or their kiss.

Ash was silent for so long that she eventually looked up. He was watching her with a hint of a frown. “Chrysalis probably dumped you in here for safekeeping while they work on Lyre.”

“Work on—”

“That spell he made—they’ll want it. They’ll force him to give up the secret, then they’ll probably kill him. You …” He pondered silently. “To Chrysalis, you’re inconsequential, important to them only as the catalyst that revealed Lyre’s hidden weaving.”

A flicker of hope cut through her horror at Lyre’s fate. “If I’m not important, then they might—”

“They’ll kill you. Probably as soon as they’re done with Lyre.”

Her stomach dropped. “Are you sure?”

“Unless they want to use your astral perception for their own purposes.”

“You know … how do you know about my …?”

He shifted his shoulders, the chains on his wrists rattling. His stare fixed on her and the fierce, demanding challenge in his eyes froze her lungs. “What will you do now?”

“D-do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I—I want to escape. But I can’t. I can’t get out of this cell, and the guards …” She tugged at the collar around her neck, bruising her skin. “I can’t. There’s no way.”

“And if you escaped the bastille, what then?”

“I can’t escape.” She pressed her lips together. “But if I could, I would find Lyre. I would get to him and find a way for both of us to escape this place.”

Ash nodded as though she’d proposed an entirely plausible plan. He rose, the sudden movement startling her, and crossed two steps to the bars that separated them. Crouching, he gestured. “Come here.”

Her mouth went dry. He loomed in the shadows, blood splattered on his face, his dark stare challenging her, daring her to back down, to succumb to cowardice.

Pushing to her feet, she walked to the steel barrier and knelt in front of him. He slipped his hands through the bars, the chains on his wrists clanging, and hooked two fingers under the collar around her neck.

When he whispered foreign words in an unknown language, disbelief rose through her. The phrases rose and fell in the measured syntax of an incantation, and she couldn’t understand what he was doing. He was wearing a magic-dampening collar. He couldn’t use magic, incantations included.

But apparently the rules didn’t apply to him, because the air sizzled around him and the collar burned hot against her skin. Then, with a flash of heat and a crackling hiss, the weight of the collar disappeared. Gray dust fell over her shoulders and chest, all that remained of the spelled steel.

She could feel her magic again, the hot pulse of power in her head that had been missing since she’d woken. She wiped at the dust on her shoulder and stared at the gray stain on her fingertips.

“Why are you helping me?”

He sat back against the wall and leaned his head on the stone. “The main exit is heavily guarded,” he said in the tone of someone commenting on the weather.

She studied him, struggling to understand his motivation. “Then how will I …”

“There are windows at the opposite end of the building,” he observed, settling in as though ready to take a nap. “Too small for most daemons to fit through.”

But Clio was small enough to fit. Was that what he was saying?

“The guards could return at any time.” He gave her a sharp look. “What are you waiting for?”

She rose to her feet and glanced down at him, at the blood and bruises. “Come with me.”

He lifted his head, stormy irises unreadable.

“Come with me. We’ll get Lyre, and the three of us can escape together.”

His gaze dropped from hers, and he closed his eyes—a clear answer.

“Ash …” Her forehead scrunched, and she remembered him walking into the cell. He could have escaped. He could escape right now if he wanted to. He didn’t need any help. The collar around his neck wouldn’t stop him, not when he could break them. The chains and bars couldn’t stop him either.

Something else was holding him prisoner, and that was what he couldn’t escape.

Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away. He would appreciate neither sympathy nor pity. He was risking further punishment by helping her, and she wouldn’t repay that by disrespecting his choice with tears or begging.

Straightening her shoulders, she strode to her cell door. The lock was a simple weave, and she broke it with a stroke of magic. She pushed the door open, then paused and looked back.

Ash watched her, that fiery challenge burning in his stare, daring her to fail, pushing her to fight.

“Thank you, Ash,” she whispered. “Good luck.”

He nodded.

Swallowing back her sorrow for him, she rushed to the door, broke the lock spell, and slipped into the dim hallway on the other side. Ahead, lights glowed and she glimpsed a large room. A murmur of voices warned of waiting guards.

She lifted her chin, gathering her strength and resolve. She would not fail. Lyre’s life, and hers, counted on this last chance Ash had given them.